After finishing his book on Green Day a few years back, Spitz turns his Bowie obsession into a book, exploring his early life as David Jones to his unlikely friendship with Frank Sinatra. Spitz tells Required Reading the No. 1 Bowie tune on his chart is “Soul Love,” from “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” He explains, “I just love the way it begins. The drumbeat and guitar are really funky and soothing at the same time. Every time I hear it, I ease back in my seat and let it take over. Lyrically it’s one of his deepest. ‘All I have is my love of love and love is not loving.’ I mean, top that.”

Almost like the old miracle of Hanukkah, where lamp-oil for one day lasts for eight, Israel has become a model of economic development despite several wars and poor relations with its neighbors. “Israel has always had to be innovative to survive,” explains co-author Senor, “and has bred a culture that encourages improvisation, self-criticism and re-evaluation; teaches teamwork and mission orientation; and cultivates leadership at a very young age.”

At last, a football book that’s as much fun as Chad Ochocinco in the end zone. This snappy collection of on- and off-field anecdotes about gridirion greats, including Frank Gifford, Joe Montana and Tom Brady, is sure to be as popular with your favorite football fan as a never-ending keg at a tailgate.

The Glass Roomby Simon Mawer (Other Press)

The Room of the novel’s title refers to part of a modernist home built on a hill in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s for newlyweds Victor and Liesel Landauer. The Landauer House is a masterpiece, visited by thinkers of the time. But the marriage is strained when the two stray. And when the Nazis steamroll into the country, they must flee (he is Jewish), attempting to reach America. When the Iron Curtain falls, the Landauers return.

Writer, artist and scholar Gao somehow managed to survive imprisonment in the Communist Chinese gulag in the 1950s and ’60s and again in the 1980s. He was first arrested at 19, after writing an essay about beauty and freedom. In that first prison, near the Gobi Desert, more than 90% of his fellow inmates died. Now 74, he and his wife live in exile in Las Vegas.